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As Maryland's leaders work to close a state budget shortfall and make government more accountable, we need every tool at our disposal. One particularly effective instrument in protecting taxpayer money is called the False Claims Act. For the federal government and many states, the False Claims Act creates a firewall against fraud and incentivizes whistleblowers to speak out and report theft. The approach has a long, bipartisan history of success. The federal government first enacted a False Claims Act in 1863, when Abraham Lincoln wanted to leverage the ability of the government to crack down on unscrupulous Civil War contractors who sold rotten food and defective arms to the...

Related "Chuck Grassley" Articles

As Maryland's leaders work to close a state budget shortfall and make government more accountable, we need every tool at our disposal. One particularly effective instrument in protecting taxpayer money is called the False Claims Act.
For the federal...

— Marylander Thomas E. Perez, who has served as secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor for a little more than a year, is now being eyed for an even more prominent position in President Barack Obama's second-term Cabinet: successor to Attorney General...

Ending decades of secrecy, Medicare is showing what the giant health care program for seniors pays individual doctors, and some physicians got as much as $10 million in 2012.
The Obama administration is releasing a detailed account Wednesday of $77...

Let me begin this column with an apology. Once a week, I pick an important issue and offer my reasoned analysis, based on the facts, of what it all means and how we should react. But there are times when the intellect fails and the heart and gut take...

The Boston Marathon bombing has brought out the xenophobes.
Often when America suffers some large, inexplicable tragedy, we want to blame "foreigners" and look for ways to fortify ourselves against them. It's more reassuring to believe that...

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans, including Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, stepped up their criticism of Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez on Tuesday, amplifying their concerns a day before the former state official faces a Senate committee vote on his...

During the debate over the Affordable Care Act, critics in Congress warned that the law would mean that many Americans would lose their existing employer-provided insurance coverage.
But when a key part of the law takes effect in January, the ones who...

With negotiations on ending the government shutdown and debt limit impasse appearing to make progress in the Senate, there is now some reason to hope that the potential cataclysm brought on by the House tea party caucus' anti-Obamacare fever will be...

It was 21 years ago last month that Harvard-educated attorney Robert Wilkins was traveling in a car pulled over for going 5 mph over the posted speed limit on Interstate 68 in Western Maryland. But rather than receive a ticket, the group, all...

Almost everyone knows CEO pay is out of control. It surged 16 percent at big companies last year, according to the New York Times, and the typical CEO raked in $15.1 million.Meanwhile, the median wage continued to drop, adjusted for inflation.What's...

After "60 Minutes" ran a devastating piece on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey O. Graham pledged to block President Barack Obama's nominees for Federal Reserve chairman and for the next...

Remember the "Gang of 14"? That was the bipartisan group of senators who six years ago agreed not to filibuster judicial nominees except under "extraordinary circumstances."
Well, looks like some people have decided to redefine...

One of the U.S. Senate's most aggressive watchdogs said Thursday he has begun an inquiry into Baltimore's public housing agency, after receiving calls and emails concerning "a wide range of allegations, including possible conflicts of interest,...

When Sarita Santillan moved from Peru to Maryland with her family in 2003, she was just 11 years old — and had little clue how hard it would be to stay here.
This week, Santillan, 20, an illegal immigrant who lives in Greektown, will be among more than a...

Hispanic and union leaders in Maryland applauded reports Sunday that Thomas E. Perez, a longtime civil rights attorney who led the state's labor department for two years, is poised to be nominated as secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor as early as...

The Des Moines Register reports that a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran was fired from his Wells Fargo Home Mortgage job because 49 years ago he put a cardboard dime slug into a laundromat's washing machine.The paper said federal regulations now prohibit banks...

Just as they did when Thomas E. Perez was nominated to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Republicans are seeking to hold up his confirmation to head the U.S. Department of Labor, using any excuse they can think up, no matter how flimsy....

The brouhaha over Attorney General Eric Holder and the contempt of Congress charge brought by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa is providing new evidence that the lunatics are running the Republican asylum.Mr. Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the...

Longtime U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm was promoted to a U.S. District Court judgeship in Maryland by a nearly unanimous confirmation vote in the Senate on Monday despite a backlog of nominations that has left dozens of vacancies on the federal...

The payments and "VIP trips" given to a Maryland cardiologist by Abbott Laboratories for parties and consulting work — disclosed in a federal report released Monday — are just what new legislation and industry guidelines are supposed to curtail,...